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Presented without comment: the cutest Alexa video available on the Internet today featuring Lauren eLL, her Dad, and Grandma. It has it all – laughs, cursing, and Hillary-bashing and Lauren even posted a reaction video showing the real life Nanna and Dad watching themselves as confused cartoons.

AdStage is announcing that it’s raised $3 million in new funding.

That might not sound like much for a startup that raised a $6.25 million Series A back in 2014, but CEO Sahil Jain told me via email that the company has always raised “in tranches.” So when you combine this new funding with the 2014 round and the $2 million raised in 2016, “We’ve essentially raised a large Series A in total.”

Plus, he said he spent all of 2017 shifting the focus of AdStage’s business. The company continues to offer tools for automating online advertising, but the main selling point is to consolidate campaign data across networks, and then to combine that with offline conversion data.

“We went from a platform where you come to build campaigns and ads to one where you cannot do that at all, and instead, come to analyze what is working and what is not from campaigns/ads you already have running,” Jain said.

The strategy seems to be paying off, with revenue growing 150 percent last year, and the total amount of ad spend on the platform increasing 25 percent to more than $500 million.

The new funding comes from Forté Ventures, HubSpot and Verizon Ventures. (Verizon owns TechCrunch.) AdStage will also be working with HubSpot to build more CRM integrations.

“We have the option for pursuing profitability with no additional capital this year, or doubling down on growth, at which point a larger B round makes a lot of sense,” Jain said. “It is important we execute thoughtfully, which will lead us to the route we decide on as a business.”

The UK’s data watchdog, the Information Commission’s Office (ICO), has still not obtained a warrant to enter and search the servers of the London-based political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica — the company at the center of the data misuse scandal engulfing Facebook — three days on from beginning the process.

The earliest a warrant could now be obtained by the regulator is Friday.

In a statement today the ICO said: “A High Court judge has adjourned the ICO’s application for a warrant relating to Cambridge Analytica until Friday. The ICO will be in court to continue to pursue the warrant to obtain access to data and information to take forward our investigation.”

The information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, made it public on Tuesday that she was seeking a warrant to search CA’s servers after the company missed a Monday deadline to hand over information her office had requested.

She also instructed Facebook to withdraw its own investigators from CA’s offices, warning that their presence could compromise her investigation.

Unlike competition authorities, the ICO does not have legal powers to raid offices without a warrant. And former UK attorney general, Dominic Grieve, has argued the ICO’s legal powers are inadequate — telling the BBC on Tuesday that the Facebook-CA scandal highlighted a need for “greater powers and greater sanctions”.

Greater sanctions are at least incoming — under the EU’s GDPR regime which will apply from May 25, raising the maximum fine for the most serious data protection violations to up to 4% of a company’s global turnover (or €20M, whichever is greater).

But the fact that the data watchdog is forced to sit on its hands waiting to gain access to servers that the companies of interest to its investigation are in control of or able to access raises serious questions about the asymmetry between big data and regulation.

Earlier this month Denham told MPs on the DCMS committee that’s investigating fake news that her office would be pushing for increased transparency around data flows and disclosure rules for digital political advertising — suggesting a code of conduct is needed to regulate the use of social media in political campaigns, referendums and elections.

And while Facebook has claimed it was unaware that ~50M Facebook users’ data was passed to Cambridge Analytica for political targeting purposes, Facebook has itself long been actively encouraging politicians and political campaigns to make use of its tools — at a time when there was a complete lack of regulation for political ads on digital platforms.

Almost a year ago, in May 2017, the ICO announced a formal investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes — including looking into complaints related to Cambridge Analytica’s use of data for ad targeting.

That investigation remains ongoing. And may well now be further delayed, given the developing nature of the story (and the ICO’s push for a warrant so it can conduct a full audit of CA’s servers).

Although, earlier this month before the latest Facebook-CA revelations hit the headlines, Denham told the committee she hoped to be able to publish the report by the end of May.

Asked by the DCMS committee whether the ICO has adequate powers to carry out its responsibilities Denham flagged a problematic gap in her “information notice powers” — noting that while the ICO can make a formal demand for information, organisations are not compelled to disclose the requested data (though they can be prosecuted for not doing so).

“Without the power to compel it is difficult to secure the desired outcome,” she told the committee. But she added she’s raised the issue with ministers and is hopeful the UK government will remedy this gap.

Australian startup Ansarada, which provides tools for companies preparing for a major transaction, will expand in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa after raising an $18 million Series A. The funding was led by Ellerston Capital, with participation from Tempus Partners, Belay Capital and Australian Ethical Investments. A noteworthy detail about the raise is that all advisory fees from the deal will be donated to Ugandan and Nepalese charities through Ansarada’s partnership with Adara Partners, a corporate advisory firm made up of financial services experts who donate their fees to help women and children living in poverty.

Ansarada provides data rooms, or secure virtual spaces that enable companies about to undergo a complex event or transaction, like a merger or fundraising, gather all relevant data and files in one place. This allows the process of performing due diligence, legal compliance, writing contracts and other tasks to go more smoothly and also lets companies track who accesses which documents. Ansarada’s clients have included some of the biggest names in tech and financial services, including Google, VMWare, Sony, Microsoft, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG. The Sydney-based company, which claims up to 80% of deals in Australia happen through its platform, will use its new funding for sales and marketing in its target countries, especially the United States, and on product development.

Other virtual data room providers include Firmex, Intralinks and Merrill Corporation, but Ansarada chief executive officer Sam Riley says one of its competitive advantages is its recently launched Material Information Platform (MIP), which serves as a complement to its data rooms. MIP uses machine learning and natural language processing algorithms trained with a dataset gathered from more than 20,000 transactions to give companies information that can potentially reduce deal risks and improve their ongoing business operations. These include an algorithm that Riley says is “up to 97% accurate by day 21 into an M&A deal at benchmarking a bidder’s behavior, scoring their engagement levels and predicting their likelihood to submit an offer and win.” It also scores the completeness of material information and tracks if risk and compliance requirements are being met.

“We’ve seen thousands of companies find out their biggest risks and opportunities too late in their life cycle, which prevents them from performing better pre-deal and ultimately getting less-than-ideal outcomes when they sell or raise capital,” Riley told TechCrunch in an email. He added “We define readiness as being able to express the value of your company very well and very fast, especially to an investor, advisor, auditor or any party that’s critical to success in your company’s most important events. Companies get control and visibility over their most important information and ensure improvement by scorecarding and assigning accountability to their management teams.”

As one would expect, Ansarada used its own products while raising its Series A.

“We eat our own ice cream, so even using the product for our own capital raise resulted in less time by our management team to prepare for the deal and more time spent executing our strategy,” said Riley. “We are now using the platform to give our board an objective score over how well our vital information and key risks are being managed. Simultaneously we are now ready for the next event on our calendar, which is likely to be a financial audit.”

Australian startup Ansarada, which provides tools for companies preparing for a major transaction, will expand in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa after raising an $18 million Series A. The funding was led by Ellerston Capital, with participation from Tempus Partners, Belay Capital and Australian Ethical Investments. A noteworthy detail about the raise is that all advisory fees from the deal will be donated to Ugandan and Nepalese charities through Ansarada’s partnership with Adara Partners, a corporate advisory firm made up of financial services experts who donate their fees to help women and children living in poverty.

Ansarada provides data rooms, or secure virtual spaces that enable companies about to undergo a complex event or transaction, like a merger or fundraising, gather all relevant data and files in one place. This allows the process of performing due diligence, legal compliance, writing contracts and other tasks to go more smoothly and also lets companies track who accesses which documents. Ansarada’s clients have included some of the biggest names in tech and financial services, including Google, VMWare, Sony, Microsoft, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG. The Sydney-based company, which claims up to 80% of deals in Australia happen through its platform, will use its new funding for sales and marketing in its target countries, especially the United States, and on product development.

Other virtual data room providers include Firmex, Intralinks and Merrill Corporation, but Ansarada chief executive officer Sam Riley says one of its competitive advantages is its recently launched Material Information Platform (MIP), which serves as a complement to its data rooms. MIP uses machine learning and natural language processing algorithms trained with a dataset gathered from more than 20,000 transactions to give companies information that can potentially reduce deal risks and improve their ongoing business operations. These include an algorithm that Riley says is “up to 97% accurate by day 21 into an M&A deal at benchmarking a bidder’s behavior, scoring their engagement levels and predicting their likelihood to submit an offer and win.” It also scores the completeness of material information and tracks if risk and compliance requirements are being met.

“We’ve seen thousands of companies find out their biggest risks and opportunities too late in their life cycle, which prevents them from performing better pre-deal and ultimately getting less-than-ideal outcomes when they sell or raise capital,” Riley told TechCrunch in an email. He added “We define readiness as being able to express the value of your company very well and very fast, especially to an investor, advisor, auditor or any party that’s critical to success in your company’s most important events. Companies get control and visibility over their most important information and ensure improvement by scorecarding and assigning accountability to their management teams.”

As one would expect, Ansarada used its own products while raising its Series A.

“We eat our own ice cream, so even using the product for our own capital raise resulted in less time by our management team to prepare for the deal and more time spent executing our strategy,” said Riley. “We are now using the platform to give our board an objective score over how well our vital information and key risks are being managed. Simultaneously we are now ready for the next event on our calendar, which is likely to be a financial audit.”

Tesla’s Model X has had some brushes with law enforcement – in a good way, as when police from Toronto demonstrated one in their patrol car colors to show what it might be like to actually use them. But police from Switzerland’s Basel-Stadt police force are going one further, and actually ordering Model X vehicles for active duty.

The first of these will be delivered this fall, with seven included in the initial order, according to Electrek. And while the up front cost of the vehicle is more than the average cruiser (the Basel-Stadt pays $97,000 on average for its current diesel-powered patrol vehicles, while a Model X P100D as configured for police use will be around $147,000), they should make up the difference in maintenance and fuel costs over time.

After the seven first cars ship out to the Swiss police this fall, the remaining fleet is slated to be delivered sometime in 2019. As for why the Model X was selected in the end, the Basel-Stadt cited its ecological benefits, as well as cost savings over the life of the vehicle, as well as its storage capacity.

Tesla’s Model X has had some brushes with law enforcement – in a good way, as when police from Toronto demonstrated one in their patrol car colors to show what it might be like to actually use them. But police from Switzerland’s Basel-Stadt police force are going one further, and actually ordering Model X vehicles for active duty.

The first of these will be delivered this fall, with seven included in the initial order, according to Electrek. And while the up front cost of the vehicle is more than the average cruiser (the Basel-Stadt pays $97,000 on average for its current diesel-powered patrol vehicles, while a Model X P100D as configured for police use will be around $147,000), they should make up the difference in maintenance and fuel costs over time.

After the seven first cars ship out to the Swiss police this fall, the remaining fleet is slated to be delivered sometime in 2019. As for why the Model X was selected in the end, the Basel-Stadt cited its ecological benefits, as well as cost savings over the life of the vehicle, as well as its storage capacity.

Mozilla has announced it’s suspending its advertising on Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica privacy controversy — saying it has concerns the current default privacy settings remain risky, and having decided to take a fresh look at Facebook’s app permissions following the latest user data handling scandal.

This week the New York Times and The Observer of London reported that a researcher’s app had pulled personal information on about 270,000 Facebook users and 50 million of their friends back in 2015, and then passed that data haul to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica in violation of Facebook’s policies.

Facebook’s policies previously allowed developers to siphon off app users’ Facebook friends data — though Facebook tightened up these permissions in 2014 — “to dramatically reduce data access”, as founder Mark Zuckerberg has now claimed — though evidently not dramatically enough for Mozilla.

Mozilla writes: “This news caused us to take a closer look at Facebook’s current default privacy settings given that we support the platform with our advertising dollars. While we believe there is still more to learn, we found that its current default settings leave access open to a lot of data – particularly with respect to settings for third party apps.”

It is also running a petition calling for Facebook to lock down app permission settings to ensure users’ privacy is “protected by default”, saying the current default settings “leave a lot of questions and a lot of data flying around”.

“Facebook’s current app permissions leave billions of its users vulnerable without knowing it,” it writes. “If you play games, read news or take quizzes on Facebook, chances are you are doing those activities through third-party apps and not through Facebook itself. The default permissions that Facebook gives to those third parties currently include data from your education and work, current city and posts on your timeline.

“We’re asking Facebook to change its policies to ensure third parties can’t access the information of the friends of people who use an app.”

Mozilla says it will “consider returning” to advertising on Facebook when — or presumably if — the company makes adequate changes to bolster default privacy settings.

“We are encouraged that Mark Zuckerberg has promised to improve the privacy settings and make them more protective. When Facebook takes stronger action in how it shares customer data, specifically strengthening its default privacy settings for third party apps, we’ll consider returning,” it writes. “We look forward to Facebook instituting some of the things that Zuckerberg promised today.”

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on Mozilla’s action and will update this story with any response.

At the time of writing Mozilla had not responded to questions about the move.

Even setting aside the current Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data handling scandal, big privacy-related changes are incoming to Facebook thanks to the European Union’s updated data protection framework, GDPR, which will apply from May 25 to any company that processes EU citizens’ personal data.

As part of those changes — and as Facebook tries to comply with the new EU privacy standard — in January the company announced it would be rolling out a new privacy center globally that would put core privacy settings in one place. That one-stop hub is yet to launch but must arrive before May 25.

Also in January Facebook published a set of privacy principles — including grand claims that: “We help people understand how their data is used”; “We design privacy into our products from the outset”; “We work hard to keep your information secure”; “You own and can delete your information”; and “We are accountable”.

Given the last of its published principles, it will be interesting to see which executive Facebook chooses to send to testify in front of Congress — to explain things like how it failed to protect the privacy of ~50M users nor even inform people their data had been siphoned off for illicit purposes.

Asked by CNN whether he will personally testify, Zuckerberg said he will do so “if it’s the right thing to do”. So we’ll soon find out how much that privacy accountability ‘principle’ is really worth.

Changes are afoot at Tide, the U.K. fintech startup that offers banking services for small businesses. TechCrunch has learned that founder George Bevis is planning to step down as CEO, and that the nearly three-year old company is actively headhunting for his replacement.

It comes at a time when Tide — which counts 30,000 small business sign ups — is said to be entering ‘scale-up’ mode, with a headcount approaching 100 employees, and ambitions to expand internationally. Earlier this week the service saw a rebrand, including a new ‘vertical’ design for the Tide card and the slogan “Do Less Banking,” a reference to the startup’s mission to make the lives of small business owners easier.

The company also announced that it had got a regulatory upgrade and is now authorised as an electronic money institution by U.K. regulator the FCA. This gives Tide more direct access to banking infrastructure and means that over time it will be less reliant on third-party providers and can have more flexibility in how it serves customers, although it still hasn’t (yet?) chosen to apply for a fully fledged bank license.

Confirming that Tide is recruiting a new CEO, founder Bevis gave TechCrunch the following statement:

“I’m a small business-focussed guy who’s had the privilege of building an amazing company serving small businesses. Now our own business isn’t small any more it’s time for me to think about bringing in someone who knows at least as much about international scale-ups as I know about U.K. startups. Tide will stay focussed on saving small business owners time — in future all across the world. I’m looking forward to continuing to play a key role, both inside the business and on the board”.

I’m told that the decision to start recruiting for a new CEO was instigated by Bevis in discussion with the Tide board, who are fully supportive. The thinking from the Tide founder is that now is a good time to look for a CEO experienced in scaling a company as the early-stage founding job is materially complete, including developing the core Tide product and finding market fit.

Meanwhile, I understand that the new CEO will be tasked with executing Tide’s growth plans, which, along with international expansion, will include evolving the startup to a full SMB banking platform play that will see it continue to plug into providers of other bank related services for small business and further commercializing through revenue-share deals. The idea is that by creating a Tide ecosystem, the company “can scale far beyond the size of any single individual provider”.

To that end, Tide has secured over $16 million in funding to date from VCs including Creandum, LocalGlobe, Passion Capital and fintech specialist, Anthemis, as well as well-known angel investors including Errol Damelin (Wonga), Alex Chesterman (Zoopla/ZPG) and William Reeve (Lovefilm, Graze, and currently CEO of Goodlord).